Tuesday, May 22, 2012

At
night, the ocean is so loud and so close that I lie awake, sure it's
going to beat against the house's supports until we all crumble onto
the rocks and break into pieces. Our house is creaky, gray,
weather-stained. It's probably held a dozen desperate families who
found their cure and left before we'd even heard about this island.

We
are a groan away from a watery death, and we'll all drown without
even waking up, because we're so used to sleeping through unrelenting
noise.

Sometimes
I draw. Usually I keep as still as I can. I worry any movement from
me will push us over the edge. I don't even want to blink.

I
feel the crashing building. I always do. I lie in bed with my eyes
open and focus on a peak in my uneven ceiling and pretend I know how
to meditate. You are not moving. You are not drowning. It's just
rain. It's your imagination. Go to sleep.

That
pounding noise is pavement under your feet, is sex, is your mother's
hands on your brother's chest, is something that is not water.

It's
not working, not tonight. I sit up and grab my pad and pen to sketch
myself, standing. Dry.

Sometimes
the waves hit the shore so hard that I can't even hear the screaming.

But
usually I can. Tonight I can, and it hits me too hard for me to draw.
I need to learn how to draw a scream.

I
close my eyes and listen. I always do this; I listen like I am trying
to desensitize myself, like if I just let the screams fill my ears
long enough, I will get bored and I will forget and I will go to
sleep.

It
doesn't work. I need to calm down.

It's
just the wind.

Not
water. Not anyone. Go to sleep.

Some
nights the screams are louder than others. Some nights they're
impossible to explain away, like my mom tries, as really just the
wind passing through the cliffs. “Like in an old novel,” she
says. “It's romantic.” Her room doesn't face the ocean.

Fiona,
down on the south end of the island, says it's the ghost, but Fiona's
bag-of-bats crazy and just because we're figuring out some magic is
real doesn't mean I'm allowed to skip straight to ghost
in
an effort to make my life either more simple or more exciting, God,
what the fuck do I even want?

I
should figure it out and then wish for it and see what happens. Who
the hell knows? Magic island, after all.

Magic
fish, anyway. They heal.

That's
the real story, that's the story everyone believes, but it's hardly
the only one that darts around.

There
are creatures in the water no one's ever seen except out of the
corner of his eyes.

The
big house is haunted.

Maybe
we're all haunted.

I
only take the legends seriously at night. The house is rocking, and
the stories are the only thing to keep me company.

Stories,
me, and ocean, and however the hell many magic fish while my family
sleeps downstairs and my real life sleeps a thousand miles away.

At
home, I never would have believed this shit. I used to be a
reasonable person. But now we're living on this island that is so
small and isolated that it really feels like it's another world, with
rules like none I learned growing up. We came here from middle
America. We stepped into a fairy tale.

Out
in the ocean, the shrieks continue, as high and hollow as whistles. I
get up and press my face against the window. My room is the highest
part of our kneeling house.

The
panes on my windows are thick and uneven. Probably the window was
made by hand. Even if it weren't so dark, I'd still hardly be able to
see. Everything's distorted like I'm looking through glasses that
don't belong to me.

But
I can just make out the waves, grabbing onto the shore with foamy
fingers and sliding back into the surf. I squint long enough and make
out white peaks in the dark water.

“Go
to sleep,” I say.

I
close my eyes and listen to the screams. I pretend it's my brother,
my little brother, who has cystic fibrosis and this fucked-up chest
and can't scream at all. Pretend this island has done the magic it
was supposed to do, and he's okay. And we can go home.

Love the mystery of the third sentence, the desperate feeling of those haunted hours, the understated weight of the mother’s hands pounding on the brother’s chest, the layers of even more mystery of the screams and the island and how it's far more - and far more difficult - than they'd expected.

I still can't fully wrap my head all the way around it. It's the first thing I've ever read by you and it honestly made me never want to pick up anything else you've ever written. Simply because this book tore me apart in such a profound and beautiful way that I'm not sure I can physically take any more of the awesome that is your writing. You are so talented. Thank you for taking a chance and writing this book.

About Me

hannah moskowitz

YA/MG author with Simon Pulse, Chronicle, and Roaring Brook Press. Out now are four YAs: BREAK, INVINCIBLE SUMMER, GONE GONE GONE, and TEETH, and two MGs: ZOMBIE TAG and MARCO IMPOSSIBLE. To come: NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED and SCRAPBOOK. Publishing makes me frustrated and confused and indignant and I love every minute of it. At least most of the time.